Rafael Lemkin lay in a U.S. Army hospital in Paris, there for treatment of exhaustion and severe hypertension, listening to the verdict on the radio. He was a public prosecutor and lawyer from Warsaw. He fled Poland in 1939 as German forces overran the country; as a Jewish jurist who had publicly condemned Nazi policies and urged outlawing such state crimes, he faced near-certain arrest. He reached America and joined the U.S. prosecution team alongside the British.
On the journey he carried suitcases stuffed with documents, many bearing the signature of Hans Frank, the Governor General of occupied Poland. Studying them, Lemkin discerned a pattern of conduct and gave it a name: genocide.
He created the term by combining words from two ancient languages:
- 1. Greek: geno- from γένος (genos), meaning race, tribe, people, or kind.
- 2. Latin: -cide from caedo and the noun -cidium, meaning the act of killing.
Unlike Lauterpacht, who focused on protecting individuals through “crimes against humanity,” Lemkin sought protection for groups. He had worked tirelessly to see genocide charged in Hans Frank’s case, but on the final day of the trial he was too unwell to attend. The matter was personal. Lemkin had spent years in Lwów, and his parents and brother were caught up in crimes said to have been committed on Frank’s territory.
“Defendant Hans Frank,” the president of the tribunal announced. In moments Frank would learn whether he would live to see Christmas and whether he could keep the promise he had made to his seven-year-old son that all was well and he would be home for the holiday.
The judgment followed. Hans Frank was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was sentenced to death. The word genocide did not appear in the counts that condemned him, but within two years Lemkin’s coinage would be written into international law with the United Nations Genocide Convention, turning his idea into a legal duty to prevent and punish the crime.
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